


the stitches or the devouring mouth

by clarinetta



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:10:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clarinetta/pseuds/clarinetta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something warm and solid and heavy presses up against the side of Foggy’s skull - the red-faced man’s gun. The tiniest whimper escapes Foggy and he wonders if Matt can even hear anything over the sound of Foggy’s skittering heartbeat. Matt schools his face into something resembling neutral, but he’s obviously wound tight enough to snap at any second. “The fun part,” the man with the trigger continues, “is that we’re going to let you choose. Your friend, or your city.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	the stitches or the devouring mouth

**Author's Note:**

> I'm the pickiest writer ever and decided to fill my own kinkmeme prompt, which is here: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1296.html?thread=2065936#cmt2065936
> 
> Thanks to the anon who gave me this suggestion: http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/1296.html?thread=2075152#cmt2075152

Foggy has lost track of how many times he has been struck.

Before, when it started, he’s pretty sure he was counting the blows, making note of each blooming mushroom cloud of pain. He can’t remember where he lost the count. It seems important to know. He tries, for the thousandth time, to piece together where he is and what’s happening. _Cement floor, tiny high-up windows_ , he recites to himself. _Fluorescent light fixtures, no light from outside, metal double doors, two men, two sets of steel-toed boots, at least two guns_. He wonders briefly how long he has been here, how many times he has recited this litany of facts to himself. His body, he is certain, has morphed into one giant bruise. At some point, seconds or hours after they began, one of the men rips Foggy’s shoes off and whacks the bottoms of his feet with some sort of club. Foggy screams to the cadence of his bones breaking, the worst drumbeat he’s ever kept time to. The muscles in his wrists pull like taffy but the zip ties stay put, knifing into his skin, making his blood run along the lifelines on his palms.

His hair hangs in his face and his voice is raw with sobbing. The men lash out at him again and again and it seems as though he has always been here, has always been a punching bag for criminals, and that he will never be allowed to leave. The rest of his life stretching in front of him in endless spirals of pain.

 _Please, God_ , he prays, not knowing who he is praying to or even what he’s asking for. _Please, God. Please._

–

“Wake up, _Frank_ lin,” a voice snarls, the _Frank_ part of his name punctuated by a vicious kick to the shin. Foggy jerks his head up, eyes snapping open, and tries to focus on the man without his vision sliding sideways. It sort of works, and the man seems satisfied with Foggy’s show of wakefulness. His face is uncovered, generic, scarless. Nothing useful to identify him with. The other man has his back to them, standing across the room against the far wall, talking on a cell phone. His head is uncovered as well, but too far away for Foggy to really make anything out.

“What do you want?” Foggy croaks. He’s thinking a little clearer now that he’s had a bit of a break from the beating.

“For you to shut up,” the man growls.

Foggy takes the hint. He forces himself to think instead of speak. He recites his list of facts again and it calms him a little, just enough to let some of his cognitive skills resurface. _Think, Nelson. Why are you here? Have they said anything to indicate possible reason? No,_ he answers himself. _Okay, new angle. Is there anything out of place here? Does anything bother you about all of this, besides the hospital bills it’s going to incur? What is it?_ Tracking his eyes around the room, he looks for something, anything that might satisfy the niggling in the back of his addled brain. His vision lands on the men, standing together now on the far side of the room, talking quietly with each other. One of them shakes his head vigorously at something the other one said, his face standing out bright red with exertion.

 _Their faces_. A breath escapes Foggy’s lungs like he’s been punched in the chest. _I can see their faces. Which means they don’t care about being identified, which means they don’t expect me to make it to the police alive._

_I’m going to die in here._

He doesn’t realize he’s whimpering until one of the men yells at him to shut up. Nodding, he closes his eyes and breathes deep. _In, out. You can do this, Nelson. In and out._ Very slowly he gets himself back under control and opens his eyes again, blinking away the tears still clinging to his eyelashes.

_Okay, back to their faces, Nelson. Get a grip. You can see them, which means they probably expect to kill you, but they haven’t yet. Why? Why bother beating you up if they don’t want any information?_

_Oh, God._ Foggy swallows the sobs that threaten again as the answer slaps him in the face. _This is about Matt. Has to be._ Leaning forward as far as his aches will let him, he bites down hard on his split lower lip to keep himself from making a noise. He doesn’t know how many more soul-shattering revelations he can take, but he’s pretty sure two in the span of ten minutes tests his limits. Thankfully, he’s saved from thinking himself any further into the rabbit hole when one of the men, the red-faced one, hollers at him.

“Hey, Franklin!” he shouts, and Foggy looks up. Both of the men are smiling, but they’re snake-smiles; ugly, twisted, vengeful things. “Got a friend here to see you.”

 _No,_ Foggy thinks as one of the metal doors gets pushed open. A familiar set of hands, bruised and scraped as always, stretch out into the open space as a gesture of surrender. Both men aim their guns as Matt slowly walks in and closes the door behind him with his foot, hands high in the air. He’s not even wearing his Daredevil suit. His nice jacket is missing, along with his glasses; the dress shirt underneath is grimy and and rumpled and covered in something that might be dried blood.

“Foggy?” Matt says steadily.

“What are you doing here?” Foggy moans.

“Trying to save your ass, d’you mind?” One corner of Matt’s mouth quirks up. Foggy huffs out a desperate laugh, which is fast silenced by the red-faced man, who moves surprisingly quickly across the room, out of Matt’s reach, and takes up a position beside Foggy, slightly back so Foggy can’t see him. Foggy hears a click that he assumes is a gun being cocked.

“This is the fun part,” the red-faced man growls softly and Foggy knows he is smiling his snake-smile. “You wanna tell ‘em how this works, boss?”

The other man steps forward into Foggy’s line of sight. He holsters his gun with one hand and pulls something small out of his pocket, clutching it in his fist. It’s a small cylinder, no bigger than a test tube, with one wire snaking from the bottom of it, connected with something hooked to the man’s belt. “So, this,” he says conversationally, gesturing to the thing in his hand, “is a bomb trigger. I’m sure you’ve seen one before. Or, at least, Franklin has,” he smirks. Matt’s jaw clenches but he stays quiet. The man continues, calm as you please, like a salesman confident in his product and his ability to sell it. “It’s a rather simple device. I hold down this button here for as long as I choose.” He displays the button on top of the trigger for Foggy. “When I let go–” he mimicks the gesture dramatically– “boom. Ten bombs go off all around Hell’s Kitchen. Abandoned buildings, mostly, a couple down by the docks. Minimal human life taken, or about as minimal as you can get with ten bombs going off in a densely populated area.” The man shrugs. He’s enjoying this, and it makes Foggy shudder. “Some people will run, but a lot of people will try to investigate, you know. Get close, try to see if there’s anybody in the wreckage that needs help. Good people. And _that_ ,” the man says with a flourish, “is when the second round of bombs will go off.”

Foggy’s eyes slide over to Matt, who is breathing heavily through his nose like a bull preparing to charge. “No offense, but that doesn’t sound like fun to me,” Matt snarls.

“I was getting there,” the man with the trigger says. Something warm and solid and heavy presses up against the side of Foggy’s skull–the red-faced man’s gun. The tiniest whimper escapes Foggy and he wonders if Matt can even hear anything over the sound of Foggy’s skittering heartbeat. Matt schools his face into something resembling neutral, but he’s obviously wound tight enough to snap at any second. “The fun part,” the man with the trigger continues, “is that we’re going to let you choose. Your friend, or your city.”

There’s a moment of thunderstruck silence, and from the look on Matt’s face, Foggy knows he wasn’t prepared for this. Foggy lets his eyes fall shut. A wave of calm washes over him and for the first time since this started, he feels something like peace. It covers him like a warm blanket, and he almost smiles. He knows what Matt is going to choose and he’s glad the pain will be over soon, and that it was worth something, in the end.

“I’m not going to do that,” Matt hisses.

 _Yes, you are,_ Foggy thinks with complete certainty. At the same time, the man with the trigger hums skeptically. “You sure about that?” he says in a soft voice, and pushes the trigger button down with his thumb. Matt must hear it, because he draws in a breath that shakes, just a little. “You choose your friend, I let go of the trigger. You choose your city, I cut the emergency wire here and have Mr. White shoot your friend.”

“Matty,” Foggy breathes.

“I am not going to let you die, Foggy,” Matt answers, his voice ragged and full of barely controlled rage.

“Do you think,” Foggy starts. He licks his swollen, split lips and looks up at the ceiling, letting the tears fall unhindered. “Do you think that… non-Catholics go to heaven?”

“We don’t have all night,” the red-faced man snaps. He pushes the barrel of the gun harder into Foggy’s skull. Suddenly, there’s a rumble above them, something sounding like a stampede that shakes the light fixtures. The man with the trigger looks up, startled.

Everything after that happens in a series of snapshots that Foggy knows will be seared behind his eyes for the rest of his life, like the aftershock of a flashbulb. In the first snapshot, Matt twitches his fingers, which releases some kind of hidden spring under both of his sleeves. It releases two weapons sharp and bright, the second snapshot, too blurred and fast for Foggy to see, which Matt flings with perfect accuracy at both of Foggy’s attackers. The weapons slice cleanly through two wrists, and two severed hands fall to the ground before the attackers realize what has happened. The third snapshot begins with the gun going off as it hits the cement, missing Foggy by a mile. The hand with the trigger clutched in it remains rigid on the floor, the thumb still holding the button down.

Someone is screaming. It might be Foggy himself, but he can’t be sure. Matt is a blur of rage and fists around him. He takes down the attackers with almost casual ease; Foggy thinks wildly that it must be rather difficult to fight when one’s hand has been very suddenly removed from one’s arm. The red-faced man goes down first, skull cracking hard against the cement. The man who previously held the trigger follows when Matt’s elbow connects solidly with his face. Quick as a flash, Matt turns from the unconscious bodies and grabs one of the severed hands, the one still holding the trigger button down. He slices neatly through the emergency wire the man had indicated and lets the hand fall to the ground again, bloody and stiff and final.

Fists still clenched, breathing heavily, Matt pauses for just a moment; he cocks his head slightly to one side, a gesture Foggy recognizes–he’s listening to something. After a moment Foggy hears it too: footsteps receding above them, the same stampede that gave Matt the distraction he needed.

Suddenly Matt is kneeling beside him. He runs his hands lightly over Foggy’s injuries, and Foggy can feel the little tremors surging through his friend.

“My hands are zip-tied, can you–”

“Yeah.”

Foggy hears the snick of a pocketknife opening, and then his wrists fall loose, the zip-tie cut. The pain in his shoulders is immense and he has to bite off a cry when he moves them. Matt grabs his forearms as gently as he can, slowly rolling Foggy’s arms forward, letting all his muscles loosen one by one after being held taut behind his back for so long. It leaves Foggy gasping, relief and pain in equal measure. His wrists are still bleeding sluggishly, as are at least a dozen different places on his body. Matt doesn’t ask “Are you okay?” which Foggy is grateful for.

“You know–” Foggy starts, before realizing that he is shaking so hard he can barely form his mouth into word-shapes. Matt shushes him. He wraps his arms around Foggy’s shoulders, so careful of his injuries, and pulls him forward until their foreheads touch. Matt is shivering too, hard enough that their heads knock together a couple of times before settling. Foggy wants to laugh at that, but he knows it would come out as a sob instead. So he concentrates on breathing.

As soon as he can speak without sounding like a hypothermia patient, he tries again. “How did you–know where I was?”

Matt smiles a little. “Apparently there are some people in Hell’s Kitchen who know who I am and want to help,” he says. “So I let them. They found you. I told them to wait a few minutes so I could get down to you, then make a commotion above us. Something to distract these chuckleheads. I told one of them to call a couple of ambulances, too. They’re on their way.”

“You–you asked–for help?” Foggy says, playing incredulous. “ _You?_ ” He can’t control the slightly hysterical laughter that escapes. “I never thought I’d see the day!”

Matt giggles with him, and Foggy detects the same hysterical note in Matt’s voice. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” Matt says through his laughter. “Can you walk?”

“Um.” Foggy tests his mangled feet against the cement; lightning shoots up his ankles all the way into his thighs and he gasps, “Um, not really.” Matt doesn’t seem perturbed about this, and Foggy discovers why when Matt scoops him up off the floor, one arm under Foggy’s back and the other under his knees. A wedding carry. “Seriously?” Foggy asks.

“Shut up and hold on,” Matt grunts, only the slightest bit of strain in his voice. Foggy feels ridiculous, but he clasps his hands around Matt’s neck anyway, too spent to make a fuss, and finally, mercifully, passes out.

–

He wakes up gasping, consciousness arriving like cold water splashed over him. It takes him a minute to realize the hand on his arm is comforting instead of restraining, that the voice he hears beside him is trying to calm him, not scare him.

“Foggy, it’s just me, it’s Matty,” the voice says soothingly. “You’re safe. You’re in the hospital.” Foggy leans back into the unfamiliar pillows and lets Matt’s voice shore him up at the edges. The gasps slowly even out into long deep breaths. It hurts a little to breathe deep but he keeps doing it until he is calm at last.

“Do you remember what happened?” Matt asks. His hand is still on Foggy’s arm, just above the bandages covering his wrist.

He does, but he doesn’t want to talk about it, so he says, “Please tell me the whole fainting-in-your-arms part was a bad dream.”

Matt laughs. “No, princess, that happened,” he teases.

“Shit.” Foggy snorts. “We better watch out or we’re going to find ourselves married in some alternate fairytale world by accident.”

“As long as I don’t have to carry out any actual princely duties,” Matt answers, but Foggy can tell his heart isn’t quite in it, though; his smile fades fast, his unfocused eyes wandering off to the side, like they’re being drawn away by a bad memory.

“Hey,” Foggy says. “I’m okay.”

Matt snorts. “You’re only saying that because of the drugs you’re on.”

“I won’t deny, I’m flying pretty high right now,” Foggy admits. “But I’ll be fine.” Matt doesn’t answer. He seems to almost be somewhere else; his body is here, but his mind is gone, trapped in some bad place he can’t shake. “Hey,” Foggy says again. “Where are you right now?”

Matt remains silent for a long moment, then says, hesitant, “You thought–when you said the thing about, about non-Catholics going to heaven. You thought that–that I would. Choose the city.”

Oh, yeah. That. “I didn’t know you had a plan,” Foggy answers honestly. “At that point, I was kind of just trying to prepare for the worst, you know?”

Matt furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head. “No, you–” He makes a frustrated noise, his fingers digging harder into Foggy’s arm. “I heard your heartbeat. You calmed down, when he said that. Like–like you knew I’d pick the city and let you die and you were okay with it.”

Foggy sighs around the lump growing in his throat. Now that he’s not in agonizing pain with a gun pointed at him, the thought that Matt would choose a thousand strangers over him does hurt just a little. He tries to shove the thought away, to rationalize it, and it works, mostly: what was one life if it could have saved an entire neighborhood? “Was I wrong?”

Matt shakes his head vehemently: not indicating Foggy is right, but categorically rejecting the whole premise of Foggy’s statement. “You–” he shakes his head again, his face crumbling into a rictus of pain. “You don’t even know,” he whispers. “You don’t understand. Wh-what I would do for you. You don’t–I ca–I can’t. Lose you. I can’t.” He’s still shaking his head, the guilt twisting his mouth; he can’t seem to stop. He lets go of Foggy’s arm and covers his face with his hands. “Oh, God.” Matt’s whole body rocks forward with the force of his sobs. “I’d pick you, God forgive me. I would.” He doubles over, rests his forehead on the edge of Foggy’s bed. Foggy’s crying too, now, one hand over his mouth, a mixture of shock and reverence and terrible fear at the thought of Matt loving him that much. He fishes for Matt’s hand, finds it, grabs on tight. He knows how wrong it is, how selfish and stupid a choice it would be, but he knows, with a fierceness that burns deep in his chest, that he would choose Matt too. In a heartbeat.

A long time later, when they’re both exhausted and out of tears to cry, Foggy opens his heavy eyelids and looks over at Matt. He’s almost asleep in his chair, his head slowly listing to one side. Foggy cracks a smile.

“Hey.” He nudges Matt’s knee. Matt jerks awake. “Why don’t you go home, sleep in your own bed.” But Matt shakes his head, shifts in his seat to sit up a little straighter. He insists that he’s fine, and Foggy is too tired to bother arguing. Foggy lets his eyes fall closed, mumbling, “You better be at home asleep when I wake up.”

–

Matt is asleep when Foggy wakes up. On a cot, next to Foggy’s hospital bed, still holding Foggy’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from the poem "You Are Jeff" by Richard Siken.


End file.
